Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

Moto X Coming Out by October; It’s All About Sensors and Will Be Built in Texas (Video)

Motorola’s next “hero” phone, the first big product launch conceived and executed since Google bought the company, will be called the Moto X.

Speaking at D11 today, Motorola head Dennis Woodside said to expect a “handful” of new smartphones to launch from Motorola by this October.

Moto X will be built in a 500,000-square-foot facility outside of Fort Worth, Texas, that was previously used to build Nokia phones. Seventy percent of manufacturing will take place there, making this the first smartphone built within the United States, Woodside said. However, the processors are from Taiwan and the OLED screens are from Korea.

“It’s in my pocket, but I can’t show it to you,” he teased.

Moto X will be laden with sensors that are tightly integrated into the phone and draw little power, Woodside said. For example, the phone will know when it’s taken out of someone’s pocket. And in a car traveling 60 miles per hour, the phone will act differently so a user can interact with it safely.

Though Motorola has just three percent market share and the support of Google, it won’t use access to Android code to get ahead, Woodside said. He did admit Android head Sundar Pichai has already seen the phone.

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”